


we do our best work when we're dreaming

by Cryptographic_Delurk



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Eluvians (Dragon Age), F/F, Pre-Dragon Age: Inquisition, but it all works out here, i don’t recommend doing blood magic or first kisses when you’re tipsy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:47:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27632288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryptographic_Delurk/pseuds/Cryptographic_Delurk
Summary: Dagna’s new workshop in Tantervale floods, and it’s at that very ridiculous point in her life that she meets Merrill.“This is my art,” Merrill said. “This is who I am.”
Relationships: Dagna/Merrill (Dragon Age)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 17
Collections: 2020 A Paragon of Their Kind Dragon Age Dwarf Exchange





	we do our best work when we're dreaming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WizardofOzymandias](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WizardofOzymandias/gifts), [sunspot (unavoidedcrisis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unavoidedcrisis/gifts).



> I was working on this as an extra little treat before reveals, but it took me a little while to pull it all together. So sorry about the lateness, but I hope you guys enjoy. Some fluffy Dagna/Merrill with these lyrics from The Tragically Hip as a prompt:  
>    
> _You fear no art and you fear no reflection._
> 
>   
> And big thank you to [Hezjena2023](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hezjena2023) for betaing for me <3

There were a great many things Dagna had learned since she came to the surface.

She’d learned the different schools of magic several times over and how they each drew upon the Fade just a little differently. She learned the process by which mages could use lyrium to enhance their spells, or smother them, and which grades of lyrium worked best for which purpose. And she’d learned how to synthesise her training as a weapon smith with the finest work the Enchanters in both the Circles and Tevinter could teach her.

But those were the things Dagna had left home to learn, so it would have been awfully disappointing if she hadn’t learned them. But there were other things – things she hadn’t expected.

She’d learned that you had to have at least four wardrobes, one for every season in Ferelden. She’d learned that surfacers had a far greater variety of vegetables than the handful they stocked in Orzammar’s markets. She’d learned that the Shaperate was so stuck in old thinking that they refused to see the gift she was offering trying to arrange a collaboration between Orzammar and the College of Enchanters. She’d learned that mages could often be bitter and resentful, perhaps for possessing brilliance they did not, and this resentment often made them erratic, crazy even. And above all, she’d learned that it wasn’t just her family. There were always going to be people who told you about all the things you couldn’t do. But you couldn’t listen to them because, like magic, there were no boundaries to what one could accomplish if you put your mind to it.

What she had learned today, was that you should not purchase real estate without visiting the property ahead of time. Even if Magister Tebrin negotiated it on your behalf and vouched for the trustworthiness of the seller.

A great many things had gone wrong between the time Dagna left South Post and now. Her lecture series at the Tantervale Circle had, regrettably, been cancelled. On account of the Tantervale Circle Tower having collapsed when rebel mages had blasted the basement with force magic. Which was followed swiftly by the dissolution of the College of Enchanters.

Well, at least Dagna had been warranted an apology note.

So she was out of a job, and in a new city with few friends or associates to call on. But she had her craft and expertise, and a building near the market district to set up a workshop and advertise her services as an Arcanist. That the walls had had spotty mould marks in greater frequency the closer you got to the suspiciously soft floor went, if not without notice, with the kind of notice that you gave things when you were terribly busy trying to open a business and keep on top of current events.

But it was time for the spring thaw and what Dagna had, regrettably, learned next, was that mould and soft floors were signs that the building you had purchased for your workshop was at risk for seasonal flooding. Which is what happened when the ice caps in the mountains melted and the rains came through and some idiot had built the place too close to the Minanter.

Dagna was in the process of learning a great deal about sand bags and buckets and the most efficient way to stack everything you didn’t want water damaged on tables and racks and hastily built platforms. And it was at this – if not wholly upsetting – at least very ridiculous point in Dagna’s life that she met Merrill.

“Hello?” Merrill had said, in a sing-songy voice that Dagna had not yet learned to associate with green wool and lily of the valley and the smell of blood. “Are you the Arcanist?”

“That would be me,” Dagna laughed anxiously, as she attempted to shovel a few buckets out the window and back onto the river banks.

“That’s good,” Merrill said. She climbed over the threshold into the workshop, knocking over a few sandbags in the process. She seemed unconcerned as she stepped barefooted in water up to her knees, and waded into the workshop. “I heard that you were the person to come to, if one wanted help with magical items.”

She stood, waiting expectantly, as Dagna attempted to save a collection of runes floating through the shop. It took several minutes for Dagna to chase them down and get them all back on the table, and during that time Merrill had just stared at her with wide green eyes, blinking intermittently.

“Well, uh, I’m sorry that I probably can’t be of service to you today?” Dagna finally said.

“Oh? Why not?” Merrill asked. “Oh dear, have I come during off hours again?”

Dagna found herself at a loss. “We’re, uh, kind of waterlogged right now.”

“Oh!” Merrill startled, looking around. “Was it not supposed to be like this?”

“Are you… asking me if I meant to flood my workshop?” Dagna asked, looking askance at the stone forge in the corner.

“Well, why would they build the workshop so close to the Minanter if it wasn’t supposed to flood?” Merrill asked. “Maybe you had a water wheel? Or you needed a solvent pool for a magical experiment? Also, I had this friend once. He ran a clinic in the city’s storm sewers, so they were always flooding. But he seemed to like it well enough, since he refused to move anywhere else and- And I’m babbling, aren’t I?” Her lips twisted self consciously. “Sorry, I suppose I was being silly and just didn’t realise.”

“No, it’s fine,” Dagna said. “It was certainly a perspective I hadn’t considered.”

Merrill crossed her arms and rubbed at her elbow. “Are you trying to get the water out? Would you like some help?” she asked.

It was not something Dagna had expected, but Merrill hardly waited for a nod, before going for a bucket. She tossed a few buckets out, and Dagna was occupied with her own attempts to salvage her workshop when the magic began to happen.

A sheen of frost floated off Merrill’s fingers and up through the cracks at the doors and windows, pressed back to freeze the water in a thick block of ice. Merrill repeated this at the other entrances to the workshop, before working to toss out the rest of the water that had been trapped inside. She did most of this without magic, using the bucket to toss the water over her ice barriers.

“Oh, I may have trapped myself inside…” Merrill said ponderously, when she took a break to catch her breath.

“Actually, I think- Yes! I probably have the materials here to put together a water pump,” Dagna announced. She cleared off a space on her table the best she could. “You might as well have a seat and settle in.”

So Merrill sat on the table and watched curiously as Dagna arranged metal and tubing and force magic runes into something that could empty the rest of the room.

“So, you’re a mage,” Dagna said.

“I am.” Merrill tucked a strand of hair behind her long ears. “Although it’s not the first thing people usually notice about me. If they notice me at all.”

The face markings were pretty striking.

“You’re not carrying a staff.”

“I’m carrying a knife,” Merrill offered, pulling her knees to her chest atop the table.

Dagna decided to leave that one alone. She set the hose above the door, and the pump on the floor submerged in water. They watched together as Dagna slid the final enchantment into place and watched the creation come to life and empty the room.

When it was done, the water didn’t even come past Dagna’s ankles. Merrill swung her leg over the side of the table, and toed it with her bare foot. It chilled into a thin film of ice where she touched it.

“Looks like I might get some work done today after all,” Dagna admitted, as she examined the enchantments in the forge, so they might get some heat. “So long as you’re holding that ice spell that is. What can I do for you?”

“I have this mirror,” Merrill said.

She seemed uninclined to say more.

“And what do you want the mirror to do?” Dagna asked. Usually people wanted things to spit fire, but she didn’t see how that might improve a mirror.

“It should do what it was made to do.” Merrill pursed her lips and let out a frustrated huff. “Oh, it feels hard to explain. I’m not very used to discussing it with anyone else. But, even though I got rid of all the cracks and inky black, it’s still not working I don’t think. Well, it’s reflecting things – which mirrors are supposed to do – but that’s about all. So I thought it might be good to have another person look at it and see if they have any ideas.”

She looked expectantly at Dagna.

Merrill was doing very little to convince Dagna that mages were not inclined to insanity. But Dagna hadn’t gotten as far as she had for lack of curiosity or willingness to hear people out.

“So, where is this mirror?”

“Oh, it’s very heavy,” Merrill said. “So I didn’t bring it with me this time. But I do have coin!”

She unloaded a heaping handful of sovereigns from the pouch at her belt, and scattered them on the table.

“I don’t really know how much advice is supposed to cost,” Merrill was saying. “But Isabela gave them to me for an emergency, and I think this counts well enough.” She winced. “Oh, but do you mind keeping that to yourself? Isabela made me promise not to tell anyone about it. She said that if people knew she was ‘giving out handouts’ they’d decide she’d ‘gone all soft’. It doesn’t really make sense, since she is very soft to the touch. Soft on the eyes too. But I would hate for her to be upset with me.”

Dagna eyed the coin greedily. She was recently out about five hundred sovereigns on an underwater workshop, after all. But she perhaps eyed Merrill a little more greedily. It was odd to meet an apostate mage that walked into your shop and revealed themselves to you, but only asked you keep the secrets of a stranger.

“I’m Dagna. Arcanist Dagna,” she said, offering her hand.

Merrill studied it for a moment, as if she was trying to catalogue its burns and callouses, and then reached out her own hand and threaded her fingers through Dagna’s. “Merrill,” she introduced. “Former First to the Keeper of Clan Sabrae.”

==

Merrill appeared on her doorstep a few days later, once things were a bit more dry. The mirror was with her, just like that, and they had a hell of a time dragging it inside and setting it somewhere where it wouldn’t get caught in the next flood.

Dagna groaned as she hefted her side of the mirror over the threshold. “You weren’t kidding when you said it was heavy! How did you get this thing over here without a cart?”

Merrill’s skinny arms were wobbling as well. “Oh, there were some people,” Merrill said vaguely, and refused to elaborate.

“So you want it enchanted?” Dagna asked.

“It’s already enchanted,” Merrill said.

 _Yes, it was_. Dagna could already see the way light distorted against its surface. She admired the curving wood and gold that made its frame.

“So you want me to…”

“Study it,” Merrill said. “Let me know what you think.”

Dagna expected Merrill to leave, and return once Dagna had had a chance to take some notes and run some tests. But paradoxically Merrill sat next to it, and watched as Dagna worked on the enchantments she’d received commissions for – clothes and shed tools and other simple things.

“I won’t get to looking at your mirror for a while,” Dagna warned.

“Oh, I know,” Merrill said, completely unfazed.

Dagna caved sooner that she should have. There were things to do, and she knew once she was absorbed looking at this new wonder, she’d be at it for hours. But the mirror and Merrill’s huge green eyes were driving her to distraction, so there was no point in putting it off.

Or maybe there was. Preliminary tests revealed very little about the mirror, and Merrill did not seem inclined to help so much as sit and stare as Dagna became increasingly absorbed. Even when Dagna asked her questions directly, Merrill evaded them with an oblivious disregard for Dagna’s mounting frustration.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Dagna breathed, at the way lyrium seemed to bounce off and absorb into the mirror in irregular patterns.

“I’d never seen anything like it either,” Merrill said. “Until I did.”

Dagna took notes on the mirror until it was far too early in the morning and she was nodding to sleep against its glassy surface. Merrill pulled her away from it, and shooed her upstairs to bed, before letting herself out.

But Merrill was back the next day, with a crumbled paper bag filled with plums and dates and rolls of bread. She offered some to Dagna, and sat next to her as she worked on the commissions she’d failed to finish the day before.

This continued over the next week or so, and Dagna was given the impression that Merrill really had nothing better to be doing with her time. She would show up at Dagna’s workshop with books and scrolls to read, or a craft project like an unmade shelf or unpasted collage, and occupy herself while Dagna worked. She would depart every so often, for a few hours at a time, claiming some business in the alienage, but never before checking if Dagna planned to work on the mirror while she was out.

“What are you so afraid I’ll do to it while you’re not here?” Dagna laughed, one day. But she supposed she was the one who had given Merrill free reign of her workshop.

Merrill bit her lip, and waited a good long moment. “At first I told myself I was worried you might break it, or hand it over to someone else. But not anymore, if I ever was truly. It’s not what _you_ might do with _it_ that worries me.”

“Oh? What’s it going to do to me?” Dagna asked, excited to be finally be getting answers. “Is it dangerous?”

“Not anymore… Probably,” Merrill said. “It gave someone Blight sickness once, but I think I fixed that when I cleared it up. Hopefully that fixed the other problem.”

“What other problem?” Dagna pressed.

For a moment, she didn’t believe that Merrill would answer, but then- “Someone passed through it once. The next time I saw them, they were part of a spirit.”

“Fascinating!” Dagna said, stars in her eyes. “So you can pass through it? Is it a doorway?”

“You aren’t afraid?” Merrill asked.

“Afraid of what?” Dagna scoffed. “I’m a dwarf. We have too much stone sense to be taken in by your average strange magical happening.” She waved Merrill off. “You mages as so superstitious – thinking things happen at random. I may not have the mirror figured out yet, but I’ve yet to find a spell or enchantment whose behaviour couldn’t be explained rationally.”

Merrill studied her hands for a moment, and then she reached forward to take Dagna by the shoulders. Dagna felt herself fluster. She realised suddenly that Merrill was short for an elf, only a head taller than Dagna herself. And in the time she contemplated this, Merrill had directed her in front of the mirror.

“What do you see?” she asked.

The mirror distorted light, but there was enough of them in its face. Dagna saw her red hair dishevelled in its bun. She saw her worn gloves and the burn scar on her forehead. She saw someone who had come a long way and made it – Arcanist Dagna. And with a very pretty girl at her shoulder.

She told all this to Merrill, who didn’t seem put-off by the small flirtation, if not fully cognisant of it either.

“Alright,” Merrill said, relieved. And then, “Eluvian… That’s what this mirror is called in the language of the People.”

Maybe getting to know Merrill was half the battle of getting to know the Eluvian itself, because both became clearer to Dagna in the days that followed.

_It’s a Dalish relic, and uses the Elvhen forms of magic. If you’re only familiar with Circle mages, I can tell you for certain they use a different sort._

(“I’ve studied in Tevinter too,” Dagna said. “But, uh, yeah… even their records of Elvhen magic were pretty spotty.”)

(“They don’t deserve the knowledge they’ve stolen from the People… But I suppose it’s best someone has it,” Merrill sighed.)

_I carved the frame myself. I only had the shards of the glass when I came from Ferelden to the Free Marches._

(“You made this?” Dagna said, admiring the delicate lacquered curve of the driftwood. “It’s beautiful. But then, how do you know the original frame wasn’t enchanted?” she asked.)

(Merrill pursed her lips. “…I suppose I don’t.”)

_The ruins I found it in had very strange architecture. We found a plaque in the back, commemorating an accord between the People and a sect of the Dwarven Empire._

(“I guess that’s us,” Dagna laughed. “A modern day commemoration of that ancient treaty. Elf and Dwarf – working together.”)

(Merrill’s face was red and warm in the light of the forge. “I guess we are.”)

==

“You shouldn’t say the things you do about mages,” Merrill said one night, cozy over a cup of spiked cider. Dagna liked it better than Dwarven Ale, although the Coconut Draft they used to have at Tapsters came close.

“I–” Dagna began to protest.

Merrill cut her off easily. “I know they were resentful of you for things they shouldn’t have been. But you had the freedom to choose to come to the Circle, and to leave it, when they didn’t.”

Dagna knew this. She did. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt to have them belittle her the same way her parents had. The way all of Orzammar had. The subtle digs at the shaky sanity of mages usually won friends, or at least did not invite criticism.

She took a long draught of cider.

Merrill looked at her too clearly, too unflinchingly.

“Why did you leave your clan?” Dagna asked, because she wanted to ask about more than the Eluvian – something that would cost Merrill something personal. “You speak so well of Dalish culture and practices. Why aren’t you with them?”

Merrill did flinch. But, non sequitur or no, she answered. “They didn’t believe in me. They didn’t believe in me, or in anything I was trying to do… I don’t even believe they cared for me, in the end.”

Dagna thought about home. About how they had told her to get her head out of the clouds and back to the grindstone. She thought about how her smithing work had gotten lazy and sloppy, because her mind had been elsewhere. And how they wanted to marry her off to a man she couldn’t love or even stand to touch because that was her duty to her parents and their caste.

And she had gone behind their backs and succeeded. Arcanist Dagna. And the irony was she was better at smithing now than ever before – keener eyes, sharper ears, more diligent hands. And it all meant nothing to them.

“That’s why I left Orzammar,” she admitted to Merrill.

Merrill fixed her with a half-smile that made Dagna want to trace the lines at her eyes, press a kiss to her nose.

They drank until they were tipsy and huddled in blankets in front of the Eluvian on top of the too-soft workshop floor. The mould and spores would probably drive them crazy before the magic did.

“We’re not making progress,” Merrill pouted suddenly.

“That’s probably not true,” Dagna said. Or maybe it was true, but Merrill was pressed into her side and it was hard not to count that as progress.

“Maybe we should try from the Fade,” Merrill said. “I keep getting terribly lost when I go myself, but if we could edge up to the Eluvian from the other side of the veil… Maybe we can find out more that way?”

Dagna laughed. “I’m a dwarf,” she reminded. “Dwarves don’t dream. When you all talk about the Fade I can only, well, dream what it would be like.”

“You could go to the Fade,” Merrill said.

“I couldn’t.”

“No, really,” Merrill said, sitting up straight. “I could take us there. Not our bodies but… I know a ritual to do it. I had a dwarf friend, Varric, who visited the Fade like that.”

Dagna giggled, but Merrill only watched her seriously, with those big green eyes, and slowly Dagna’s smile fell. “You’re serious?!” she demanded.

“Of course,” Merrill professed.

“You can really-?! Oh, oh praise the Ancestors. You can really take me there?! I’ve always wanted to see the Fade! Experiment with it! How did you-?”

“I asked her how.” And suddenly Merrill’s voice cracked. “I kept pestering her for details. I tried to guilt her with all the things she’d do for Feynriel and not for me. And eventually she walked me through the steps and taught me how, for whoever’s dreams I’d need to follow in after.” Merrill seemed an emotional drunk, because she wiped at her face and clung to Dagna’s shoulder. “All those questions. I asked so many. But not that one. ‘How did you know? Where did you learn?’ I assumed it was just what a Keeper was meant to know. Not something she had traded for. I always ask the wrong questions.”

Dagna ran a soothing hand over Merrill’s back. “Well, uh, I think you asked the right questions,” she reassured. “If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t know what we need to do now.”

Merrill sniffed. She laced a hand around Dagna’s neck, and quick as anything tilted her head up to kiss her.

And then as quick as Merrill was there, she was gone. She stood and drew her knife from her belt, and cut over her fingers. Dagna watched, as she traced the glyph on the mouldy floor, around them and the Eluvian with her blood. She worked quickly, but with surprising precision. And Dagna watched her and tried to remember as much of it as she could for later, when she had a notebook and a clearer head.

“You can do it with lyrium, or other things,” Merrill said, turning to Dagna when she was done. She raised her cut hand – “But this is my art.” She nodded at the bloody glyph on the floor – “This is who I am.” She nodded at the Eluvian – “And this is what I will give my everything for – a sheltered place for the People to walk.” She tilted her head, and her eyes gleamed in the darkness. “Am I scaring you?”

She seemed so serious, Dagna had to laugh. She hadn’t exactly been subtle with her words, even that first day in Dagna’s workshop. “I already told you I studied in Tevinter. You can’t surprise me with a little blood.”

Merrill blinked. She sat back down on the blankets and leaned in.

Dagna met her halfway this time. Her lips caught on Merrill’s chin, moved up to find her mouth. But she couldn’t contain the laugh bubbling up her throat, and pulled away to let it escape.

“I can’t believe I get to see the Fade!” she giggled. She thought about all the things she might learn there. Things she couldn’t even imagine.

Merrill took her hand, and laid her head down over Dagna’s stomach. “Then let’s get you to sleep, lethallan,” she said. And Dagna could see the glyph begin to glow in the corners of her vision. “And we can dream together for a little while.”


End file.
